Decisions, Decisions

There are many choices to make in this life. You can only control your part of those choices—sometimes your part is 50% (relationships), sometimes it’s closer to 100% (say, deciding what to do with your time, assuming you can afford to do what you want—if not, the percentage drops), and other times, it’s completely out of your control and you just have to ride it out (hurricanes, nuclear war).

In many cases, the choice is clear: you know what you should do, and you do it. The “should” comes from somewhere within, from the polestar that seems to live inside each of us. Sometimes the choice we make is not the one we want to make, but it feels like the one we must make.

My polestar may not always know what the right choice is, but it sure as hell knows when I’m headed off-track. At various times in my life, I’ve tried like crazy to resist that knowing, but in the end I have had to give in to it, because more often than not it has been dead-on accurate. I don’t know exactly what the force is, where it comes from, nor why it pulls me with such conviction this way or that at any given time. But pull it does, outlasting all of my resistance until I surrender. I literally trust it with my life.

Even when the right choice is not the one I would prefer, accepting the choice I must make feels solid, like I’m coming home.

….

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the dream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a stream…